This invention relates to a recording apparatus, a reproduction apparatus, and a file management method and can be applied, for example, to an optical disk apparatus. More specifically, the present invention relates to a recording apparatus, a reproduction apparatus, and a file management method wherein a large number of files recorded on a recording medium are managed with an index file.
In recent years, many disk apparatus or like apparatus have been proposed wherein a recording medium of a large capacity, which can be accessed at random such as an optical disk, is used to record image pickup results.
A method for a disk apparatus of the type described is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2001-84705 (Patent Document 1) wherein an index file is formed from a large number of files recorded on a recording medium and is recorded on the recording medium and used to assure a high operability relating to the large number of files.
Another method is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-278996 (Patent Document 2) wherein a large number of files are hierarchized and managed in and with an index file generated in such a manner as described above to further improve the operability relating to the large number of files.
It is considered preferable if the operability with such an index file as described above can be improved further than ever.